


Pilots and Stories

by Merkwerkee



Series: Pilots of ARENA [2]
Category: Masters of the Metaverse
Genre: Gladiators, Gore, Slavery, s6 e 13
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:54:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22856578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merkwerkee/pseuds/Merkwerkee
Summary: When Rosie Harvin sent out her message of hope, Monday - known to some as Milkshake - decided to take it a step further. Some metapilots took it better than others
Series: Pilots of ARENA [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1643143





	Pilots and Stories

_…the play’s the thing  
Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King._

———————————————————————————————

The silence had been the worst part. The tired, defeated silence that had weighed over the holding areas like a funeral pall - that, that was the part Doris had hated most of all.

She’d had friends, a loving husband, three lovely children, a house in the suburbs kept to the latest standards, the perfect life as prescribed by The Party to which she was a longstanding member. Her days had been filled with the chatter of her neighbors, the piping voices of children, and the pleasant baritone of her husband’s voice. Hollywood Star Playhouse and Hopalong Cassidy on the radio in the afternoons, and the Ed Sullivan show in the evenings on the TV set that was the envy of the neighborhood.

She’d been on her way to a Party meeting when she’d been taken, the awful shades swallowing her screams even as they tore her away from everything she knew and loved. That silence had stayed, even when the shades themselves dumped her with some shady-looking men in greasy shirts. Oh she’d made plenty of noise, but the men had ignored her. They’d sold her in the bowels of this horrendous city, and even the negotiations had been a quiet susurrus.

She’d tried making friends with some of the others before her first match, but most had simply looked at her dumbly - with a scattered few who sneered at her attempts or given her deeply sympathetic looks. She hadn’t known, then, why they acted so, but had determinedly filled up the silence with the kind of polite small talk that had been drilled into her since she was a little girl.

And then she’d won her first fight.

It hadn’t been easy; for all she’d bonded as well as she’d married - and she’d married _quite_ well, thank you very much - Doris wasn’t a fighter. Hadn’t been a fighter. But she liked living more than she hated fighting, and when the chips went down so did her opponent. She’d walked out of the makeshift arena in a daze, blood drying on her clothes and under her fingernails, and other pilots had shied away - save one, who had simply met her gaze and nodded sadly. His match had been next, and she’d watched him be flayed alive with a kind of dull numbness.

She’d stopped talking to the other pilots after that. Waiting to get pushed into a meat grinder wasn’t exactly the time or place to discuss the latest gelatin recipes or what the well-dressed man was wearing these days.

And then, something had……changed.

It started with the symbol. In her little shoe box of a cell, on the corners of walls in the pilot holding areas, somehow woven into the mats of the training area her owner used - overnight the symbol flowered. Hex is Hope. And it had spread, carved into doors and furniture by the nervous, sprayed large across walls and fences by the foolish, stitched into hems and collars by the cautious - now it was everywhere. Hex is Hope.

And then, at some point, the stories had started.

Doris _lived_ for the stories, drinking them in greedily like she had done so long ago to the latest neighborhood gossip, and passing them along to anyone who would listen. Doris had forgotten how much she loved to talk to people who would listen. It was never a sure thing, who was going to be at which tournaments - and how their owners felt about them having universal translators - but Doris managed to gather a tenuous gossip circle that she honestly would have been ashamed to claim if she had been home, but was precious beyond measure in this miserable place.

And so they talked, arena monitors frequently having to prod them to get them out the gate at the last second. Gael, Mortimus, Phanex, Tigure, Ishi, P'f’t'gh, Rhombus Trapezoid Circle, Motes of Sunbeam Dust - and Doris at the head of the group, regaling them with the tales she’d heard from others and chattering away at how the pilots had done this or that, and how they could have done things differently, and what they were wearing and all manner of juicy things.

For the first time, in a very long time, Doris was _living_.

———————————————————————————————

Hristiana glanced around furtively as she undid a roll of cloth from around her waist.

If her owners found it, she would be very, _very_ dead - but more than that, it was _private_. It was hers alone, and while it felt a little silly in the face of all that Collyseum represented, she loved it.

Her people were a proud warrior race, and combat - especially single combat - was considered to be the highest form of devotion one could show to the gods who demanded blood, sweat, and tears in exchange for good harvests, easy births, and few diseases. Every year hundreds of young men, women, envions, and orvays fought to the death on the warm sands and watered the thirsty ground with their blood. Hristiana herself had won several bouts during those festivals, and had been chosen for the honor of the Deep Knowledge, to hold and pass on to the next generations, when she had been taken.

It had been something of a shock, when she had been entered into her first tournament, the sheer lack of proper respect and reverence for the proceedings. No gongs were rung, no gods named, honored, or invoked, no songs sung, no declarations were spoken. Instead, a loud buzzer had sounded and two looked-like-men had engaged in tearing each other apart like animals. Hristiana had been horrified, and had tried to start the proper rituals before her own fight was called, that she might not die disrespectful to her gods.

But her opponent hadn’t known any more about fighting than he seemed to have knowledge of how fights should be conducted, and Hristiana had been trained to fight since she could hold a training weapon over her head. The fight had been over quickly, and she had gone on to win several more before it finally sank in that these fights were different, and she was a _very_ long way from home.

At first she had tried to go through all the proper rituals before each fight, making small flags with the gods’ symbols out of scraps of cloth, saving libation from her meals, and going through as much litany as she could before her name was called and she was put into the arena. Eventually her indulgence in ritual dwindled to just the litanies and finally, as the gods remained silent, nothing at all.

And then something had changed.

Hristiana looked down at the roll of cloth as she laid it out, the symbol at the top embroidered painstakingly to mirror the one burned into walls, written into floors, and made in the shadows cast by the hanging lights. By itself, the symbol did very little beyond break through the miasma of grief and despair that had anchored itself to every wall and strut of this cursed place. But the words that had followed it, the stories writ large into the dry air of this world……There was a power to those.

Hristiana took a deep breath. 

“O Hex Destiny, from whom all hopes flow, look upon this soul and grant peace in this dark time. Elliana, Mistress of Light, shine upon the way forward. Johnny Appleseed, bring softness to the road and guide my heart where it needs to go. Jack Kershaw, lend your strength to my arms, that I may survive this fight…”

Hristiana continued speaking carefully, making sure to get the tenses exactly right even as her fingers traced the symbols embroidered in the fabric. It was more out of respect than fear of retribution, but it was _important_. The words _mattered_.

The gods she’d known all her life were left behind; they could neither hear nor avail her at this far-flung locale. But here, now, in this dread place, new exemplars had arisen. New hope had sprung from barren sands. And all around her, voices unused for decades spoke stories of those who fought the darkness and prevailed.

 _Hex is Hope_.

———————————————————————————————

Daveon wasn’t sure the lady was real.

To be fair, seeing that-which-wasn’t had been a problem of his long before he’d been dragged to this dry, overheated hellhole, but it was much worse here. He’d almost been killed in his first match here because he couldn’t tell which opponent was really gunning for him and which was just a trick of his eyes; it’d been sheer dumb luck that had had him falling on his duff as his real opponent went sailing over his head and the not-there ones grabbed each other to fight it out.

Daveon had never figured out if it was shades of the past he saw, or reflections of the future - or even just hallucinations produced of his own deranged mind. Not that it made any material difference to him right now; as long as the collar was around his neck, he couldn’t do anything about what he saw anyway. And anyway most of the time the hallucinations did what everyone else did; sit around and hang their heads as if the weight of the world rested on them.

But the lady was different. For one thing, she didn’t have a collar on; collars were cheap and effective, and the preferred method of controlling slaves at the tournaments Daveon competed in. For another, she was going around touching people. Well, putting her hand near them, anyway; they never seemed to react to her presence and she’d sigh and move on.

Daveon couldn’t help but stare. She was probably the most fascinating thing that’d ever happened in this sorry excuse for a pilot readying room, and he was bored out of his mind. She wasn’t beautiful - not enough eyes for a start, just the one pair - but she was interesting. Of course, _interesting_ got you killed around here but Daveon had reached the end of that rope long ago.

He stiffened as she caught his eyes, and a smile slowly blossomed on her face as she made her way over to him. Planting herself firmly in front of Daveon, she regarded him for several long seconds before holding out her hand. Daveon reached for it cautiously, but wasn’t surprised when his hand went right though. Not real, then.

“Monday.”

The voice was as unexpected as her appearance had been, and Daveon felt his eyeridges climbing toward the top of his head. Still, it would be rude not to reply and he was still bored.

“Daveon.”

She smiled. “Daveon. It’s a good name.”

“Only one I have.”

it was a stupid thing to say, and Daveon kicked himself mentally. Still, Monday didn’t seem to mind as she settled next to him on the bench he’d been lounging on. He politely moved his tail out of the way, though she didn’t seem to need the space.

“Would you like to hear a story?”

Her voice was soft, yet even with the crowd cheering away at some poor idiot’s demise he heard her perfectly. He looked at the ceiling for a long moment - some enterprising person had managed to crudely carve Hex is Hope up there, huh - before mentally shrugging and turning back to her.

“Sure. Haven’t heard anything good in a while.”

Too long a while. She seemed to hear what he didn’t say and she smiled a soft, nearly sad smile.

“Well, once upon a time in a Metaverse far, far away, there were five beautiful girls whose chosen mission was to defend the universe from evil in all its many, creeping forms…”


End file.
